Ariel Castro

Ariel Castro (July 10, 1960 – September 3, 2013) was born in Duey, Yauco, Puerto Rico, the son of Pedro Castro and Lillian Rodriguez.

His parents divorced when he was a child, and he moved to the contiguous United States with his mother and three biological siblings.

The family first lived in Exton, Pennsylvania, before settling in Cleveland, Ohio, where Castro's father and several other family members were living.

Castro had nine siblings (both full and half) and graduated from Cleveland's Lincoln-West High School in 1979.

Castro met his girlfriend, Grimilda Figueroa, when his family moved into a house across the street from hers in the 1980s.

Castro and Figueroa lived with both sets of their parents until they moved into their own home at 2207 Seymour Avenue, located in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood, in 1992.

Their home was a two-story, 1400 ft2, four-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a 760 ft2 unfinished basement built in 1890 and remodeled in 1956.

According to Figueroa's sister, Elida Caraballo, she said that "all hell started breaking loose" after the couple moved into their new home.

Caraballo claimed that Castro beat Figueroa by breaking her nose, ribs, and arms and causing a blood clot on her brain that resulted in an inoperable tumor.

He also threw her down a flight of stairs, cracking her skull.

Michelle Knight (born April 23, 1981) disappeared on August 23, 2002, after leaving a cousin's house.

She was 21 years old at the time.

On the day of her disappearance, she was scheduled to appear in court for a child custody case involving her son Joey, who was in the custody of the state.

Following Knight's rescue, police acknowledged that limited resources had been spent on investigating her disappearance, in part because she was an adult.

Authorities believed that she had run away voluntarily due to anger over losing custody of her son.

According to Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba, she was "the focus of very few tips".

Some criticized her subsequent removal from the National Crime Information Center database fifteen months after she disappeared, which made her largely unknown prior to her rescue.

The Cleveland Division of Police (CDP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintain that her inclusion or exclusion had no bearing on her rescue.

Amanda Marie Berry (born April 22, 1986) disappeared on April 21, 2003, the day before her 17th birthday.

In 1993, Castro was arrested for domestic violence, but was not indicted by a grand jury.

In 1996, Figueroa moved out of the house and secured custody of their four children.

Police assisted in the move and detained Castro, but they did not press charges.

Castro continued to threaten and attack Figueroa after she left him.

She was last heard from around 8:00p.m. when she called her sister to tell her that she was getting a ride home from her job at a Burger King at the corner of Lorain Ave & W. 110th St. The FBI initially considered her a runaway until a week after her disappearance, when an unidentified male used her cell phone to call her mother.

He said: "I have Amanda. She's fine and will be coming home in a couple of days".

Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus from the streets of Cleveland, Ohio and later held them captive in his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in the city's Tremont neighborhood.

Figueroa filed charges in 2005 in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court, which accused Castro of inflicting multiple severe injuries on her and of "frequently" abducting their daughters.

The court granted her a temporary restraining order against Castro, but it was dismissed a few months later.

Figueroa died in 2012 due to complications from her brain tumor.

Friends and relatives gathered on Denison Avenue on April 29, 2012, for memorial services in her honor.

Before his arrest at age 52, Castro worked as a bus driver for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District until he was fired in November 2012 for "bad judgment", including making an illegal U-turn with infants and toddlers on his bus, using his bus to go grocery shopping, leaving a child on the bus while he went for lunch at Wendy's, and leaving the bus unattended while he took a nap at home.

He was earning $18.91 per hour when he was discharged.

At the time of his arrest, Castro's home was in foreclosure after three years of unpaid real estate taxes.

Castro kidnapped his victims by offering them a ride; he drove each to his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue, lured them inside, took them to the basement, and restrained them.

All three young women were imprisoned at Castro's home until 2013, when Berry successfully escaped with her six-year-old daughter, to whom she had given birth while captive, and contacted the police.

Police rescued Knight and DeJesus, and arrested Castro hours later.

Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape.

He pled guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder as part of a plea bargain.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 1,000 years in prison without the possibility of parole.

One month into his life sentence, Castro committed suicide by hanging himself with bedsheets in his prison cell.